


Blood and Bones

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Dark Dean Winchester, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:56:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Revenge is a dish best served bloody ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vichan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vichan/gifts).



There’s blood on his hands. He’s looking at them when he comes back to himself, so it’s the first thing he notices. It’s tacky—half-dry already—and he doesn’t feel hurt at all, so he doesn’t think that it’s his.

The second thing he notices is that he’s kneeling in something wet and slick, and when he looks down there’s a carpet covering the floor. The carpet is a boring beige color most places, but a dull maroon where he’s kneeling. Also, there are dark drops leading away from him to …

Okay, third thing. There’s a body lying on the floor by the wall, at the other end of the blood trail. Or he thinks it’s a body. He can’t really be sure because there are … parts missing. Like an arm, and a head and … and skin.

He’d keep cataloguing things—how the room smells _(piss and shit and blood)_ would be number four—but he’s too busy leaning over and puking. When the tremors finally stop running through him, he stares down at the rust colored gunk that he just coughed up and thinks, _what the fuck did I eat?_

That’s when it hits him.

He has no memory of this room. No memory of how he got here, or of what he had for breakfast this morning, or of anything before that. Everything is blank, like his past is a chalkboard that got erased when he wasn’t looking.

He crawls off the damp spot on the rug before trying to stand, and he’s feeling a little woozy—maybe from the puking, maybe from something else. Maybe he’s been drugged. He could have been, he realizes, and it is that thought that brings the panic welling up. He could have been _anything_ , and there’s no way to know. Could be _anyone_ , and his gaze is drawn unwillingly back to the lump of flesh by the wall.

He’s covered in blood—not just on his hands, but all over. He can feel it dripping slowly down the back of his neck: knows that if he darted his tongue out across his lips, he’d be able to taste it. He’s covered in blood and uninjured, as far as he can tell, and there’s a dead _(man? woman?)_ body in the room.

He realizes that he’s hyperventilating and tries to calm himself down. But it isn’t like he can remember any helpful techniques, and so he ends up crouched on the floor with his head hanging between his knees. He thinks that maybe he should be getting the blood off of him—maybe he’ll be able to think more clearly if he’s clean—but he doesn’t really want to leave the room.

Anything could be outside the door. Or nothing. Jesus Christ, _that’s_ a really unsettling thought. What if he opens the door and there is, literally, nothing there?

A phone rings from somewhere inside the room and he finds his hand groping for something at the small of his back—something that isn’t there. A weapon, maybe? Is he used to carrying around a gun, or a knife or something? He thinks that a gun is more likely: he doesn’t think that tucking a knife that close to his ass would be a great idea, and he’s pretty sure that he isn’t moron.

The phone is still ringing and he gets up a little unsteadily to look for it. It’s not difficult to find: the room is empty except for a few bookshelves and a desk _(and the poor bastard in the corner, let’s not forget him)_. The phone’s on the desk next to … next to a knife that’s caked with blood. Okay, not gonna deal with that one right now. He ignores the knife and stares at the phone, wondering what he should do about it.

On the one hand, maybe he lives here and there’s a perfectly good explanation for why he’s just woken up covered in blood in a room with a dead body. On the other hand, maybe this is Joe the Skinless Wonder’s house, and he’s … what, exactly? Some Hannibal Lector-type psycho who gets his jollies carving up his fellow human beings? That can’t be right, can it?

The phone’s still ringing, like someone knows he’s there and isn’t going to go away until he answers. After a few more moments of hesitation, he picks up. Mostly because if it keeps ringing like that, then he’s going to lose what little is left of his mind.

“H-hello?” he says.

The line is crackling—full of static and distortion—but he can make out the voice clear enough. “The police are on their way.”

His chest does a magic trick and turns into a solid block of ice. “What?” he says thickly.

“There’s no time for games here, Dean. You’ve just killed a man and if the police find you there, it won’t go well for you.”

“W-Who—”

“A friend. You don’t remember me right now, but you have to trust me.”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t interrupt, just listen. Your name is Dean Winchester, and you’re wanted for murder, among other things.”

“You’re lying.” The voice has to be lying. He doesn’t—God, no matter what the evidence to the contrary, he doesn’t feel like a murderer.

“Feel free to believe that if you want to. Wait for the police to arrive: I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to fill you in on the details.”

He slams the phone back onto the cradle at that taunt. Darts his eyes around the room, hoping for answers—hoping for something familiar.

The phone rings again and this time he picks it up immediately.

“Do you _want_ to die?” the voice on the other end demands.

“No,” he breathes.

“Then haul ass out of there now.”

“I’m—I can’t, I’m—” _Covered in blood,_ he’s going to say, but how the fuck do you say that to someone you don’t know? Well, to someone you don’t remember knowing anyway.

Luckily, the guy seems to know _him_ pretty well, because he fills in, “Got a little messy, did you? It’s not a problem. Just head out the door and down the hall. Second room on the left will have a fire escape. Climb on down and I’ll be waiting for you at the bottom.”

This time it’s the guy on the other end who hangs up, and he _(Dean? is that his name?)_ is left holding an empty line. He slowly places the receiver back on the cradle and looks around at the room, weighing his options. None of them look very good.

Option one: he can trust the guy on the phone and take the fire escape. Hope that he’s not walking into some kind of trap.

Option two: he can walk out the front door and strike out on his own with a) no memory, and b) the steadily increasing suspicion that he is Not A Nice Guy.

Option three: he can wait here for the police. If the guy on the phone was lying, then the cops will take care of everything and he’ll be fine. If, on the other hand, the guy was telling the truth, then the cops will still take care of everything. Only this time they’ll cuff him and toss him in four by six box with metal bars on the windows.

In the end, with his stomach twisting and his hands shaking, he unplugs the phone and sits down with his back against the desk. The thing is, if his mysterious benefactor was telling the truth and he _is_ some kind of homicidal maniac, then he _belongs_ in jail.

There are sirens outside somewhere, coming closer, and he settles his head on his knees to wait.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Despite the drawn faces of the police on their way out of the apartment, Henricksen doesn’t think that there’s anything in the room that can surprise him. Then he gets his first view of Jeffrey Feldgald—or rather, what’s left of Jeffrey Feldgald—and quickly changes his mind. He manages to keep from throwing up, mostly through sheer willpower, and focuses on his quarry. On the man he’s been hunting for the past three years.

Dean Winchester is covered in blood. It’s caked on his skin and dried to a crusty, reddish-black color. He’s sitting quietly in a corner with his hands cuffed behind his back and two officers standing in front of him. Both men have their weapons out and trained on him: a security measure that Henricksen himself insisted on when he spoke to them on the phone earlier.

 _‘Don’t get close enough for him to grab you,’_ he told them, _‘and don’t take your goddamned eyes off him, either. I don’t want him pulling another disappearing act before I get there.’_

Now he forces a smile on his face and says, “Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”

Dean looks up at him. Meets Henricksen’s eyes with none of his characteristic swagger. “Do I know you?” he asks, his voice a little rough.

Henricksen ignores the wise-ass question and shoots back, “Where’s Sam?”

Dean’s face crinkles in confusion, flaking off some of the blood. Henricksen considers waiting to question the man until after the CSIs have had their turn at him and he’s been cleaned off—that red mask is more than a little disturbing—and then shelves the idea. Every minute he delays is another that Samuel Winchester has to make good on his escape.

“Come on, Dean,” Henricksen urges. “Be a team player here. Tell me where Sam is and I’ll put in a good word for you with the judge.”

He’ll do no such thing, of course. Not after what Dean put him through—not after he watched the bastard shoot his partner in the back of the head and then torch the body. Sam actually apologized afterward, squatting down in front of Henricksen _(gagged and trussed to a beam like a goddamned Christmas goose)_ , and saying that he was sorry there wasn’t anything more they could have done.

Like they hadn’t just done enough.

“Is that …” Dean licks his lips and then makes a disgusted face and spits. “Dean … Winchester? Is that really my name?”

In the face of the rage that fills him when he realizes what the bastard's up to, Henricksen forgets his own rules. He squats close to Dean, getting right up in his face, and hisses, “You try to get off on an insanity plea and I will _personally_ make sure you don’t live to see trial.”

The fact that he's willing to go vigilante on this one is a measure of how much this chase has degraded his own morals, but the alternative is unacceptable. If Dean actually manages to pull of this insanity thing—and he could: whatever else he is, he’s a smart son of a bitch—then he’ll be remanded to a state psychiatric hospital. From there, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump until he’s back on the street.

“I’m not,” Dean protests. “I—Jesus, man, just tell me if I know you.”

It’s all Henricksen can do not to drive his fist through Dean’s face right there. “He had a wife, you know?” he says through his teeth. “He had a wife and a kid, but you probably don’t care about that, do you, you piece of shit?”

Dean’s eyes go to the pile of meat in the corner that used to be Jeffrey Feldgald and this time Henricksen can’t restrain himself. He grabs Dean by the throat and knocks his head back against the wall to get his attention. Any other crime scene and there’d be three officers pulling him off of the guy by now. This scene, however, and Dean Winchester himself, has everyone spooked, and Henricksen gets the vibe that some of the men are glad he lost control.

“I’m talking about my partner,” he growls. “You remember him, don’t you, Dean? You remember plugging him four times and then burning the body? I couldn’t even give a box of ashes to Gina—you and that fuckwad brother of yours threw them in the goddamned lake.”

Dean’s face is still mostly blank: the only emotion on it a kind of dull shock. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Henricksen can’t stop himself from bashing Dean’s head back into the wall again and again until the man’s limp and unconscious and there’s the fresh scent of blood in the room.

No one tries to stop him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He wakes up in the back of a police car. He’s cuffed to the seat and he can hear the officers in the front talking—wondering why they’re bothering to take him to Brunswick County Medical to get checked out. He’s filth, he’s psychotic scum, and did Jake get a load of what he’d done to that guy up there? Jake mentions that _he_ heard this Winchester guy tortured a bunch of women to death in St. Louis a few years back.

Dean—he’s definitely Dean Winchester, that fed recognized him for sure—lets his eyes slip shut again and tries to block out the conversation by concentrating on the pounding in his head. Feels like the fed was trying to kill him back there. Not that Dean can blame him if what the man said is true.

 _But if I’m a murderer, then why do I feel so bad about it?_ he wonders. He doesn’t have time to puzzle that out, though, because there’s a sudden squeal of tires and a deafening bang and the car isn’t moving anymore. Dean hears shouting from the cops, and then screaming, and then silence.

He lifts his head, blinking blearily toward the front of the car, and there’s something red and dripping on the grating between the seats. There’s a smell that’s already becoming familiar—the urine-soaked scent of death. He thinks he’s going to be sick again.

Then the back door is opening and a man is leaning inside the car, reaching for him. He has black on black eyes, and Jesus that’s not normal. Not _human_. The guy is huge, with short hair as dark as his eyes, and Dean’s never seen him before but he knows that he’s screwed just the same.

This thing just finished plastering his police escort all over the inside of the car, and now it’s gonna do the same thing to him. He can’t stop it—he _knows_ that—but, filled with a kind of desperate terror, he kicks out anyway.

“Shh, Dean,” the thing says. “It’s okay. It’s me, you dumbass.”

Dean recognizes the voice from the phone and, despite the fact that every instinct is screaming at him to keep fighting, he goes quiet. “It was you. Before. On the phone.”

The thing reaches in and does something Dean can’t see to the handcuffs and they fall off of his wrists. “Course it was. Now come on, we’ve got to get out of here before Henricksen shows up.”

“Wait!” Dean protests, even though he’s fairly sure that arguing with this thing isn’t a good idea, considering what it’s capable of. “I’m not going anywhere with you until I know—”

“Who I am?” The thing grins at him, wide and easy-going. “I’m Sam. Your brother.”

No way in a million years is that true. Dean may not remember this Sam guy, but he’s pretty sure that the fed would have mentioned if Dean’s brother had black eyes and wasn’t completely human.

“You’re not my brother,” he breathes, and the thing’s face twists in annoyance as it clamps a hand over Dean’s wrist and starts to haul him out of the car.

“Stop being a moron, Dean. Now come on; we’ve got places to go, people to kill.”

Dean whimpers in the back of his throat. He knows he should be resisting, but his head hurts, and he’s so goddamned confused, and scared, and he just wants this horrible nightmare to be over.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” he whispers, digging his hand into the seat cushion in a last ditch attempt to stay in the car.

The thing calling itself Sam just tightens its grip and pulls harder, almost wrenching his shoulder out of the socket. Dean’s other hand loses its purchase and he slides out of the car into the thing’s arms.

“Come on, man,” it growls. “Stop fighting me on this.”

“I don’t—just leave me alone, I—” And then the thing’s fist is hurtling toward his face and Dean has time to think, _not aga—_ , before everything goes dark.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When he wakes up again, he’s feeling a little better. His head doesn’t hurt so much, despite having been knocked out twice in short succession, and the panic that has been plaguing him since he realized he has no memory has quieted. He thinks that the bitter taste in his mouth might have something to do with that.

“How are you feeling?” It’s the thing that pulled him out of the cop car, sitting on the bed next to him in this dimly lit room and laying a gentle hand on his forehead.

Dean licks his lips and this time there’s no taste of blood. He’s clean—the thing must have washed him off before tucking him into bed. He wants to be frightened of the black-eyed monster looming over him—of what it might want from him—but he can’t seem to force any emotion through the fog shrouding him.

The thing’s still waiting for an answer, so Dean focuses and manages to say, “My mouth tastes weird.”

“That’s your medicine,” it answers, confirming what he’d already suspected. “You feel calmer now, though, right? Better?”

“I guess.”

“You know who I am?”

He hesitates. He knows who it’s pretending to be, but he still doesn’t believe that—

“What’s the problem, Dean?”

“Your eyes,” he admits, and the thing grins at him.

“Bothering you?” It blinks and the black is gone. The thing looks down at him with normal, human eyes. Unremarkable brown irises.

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Parlor trick. I’ve got a few special abilities, and the eyes are part of the package. But I’m still your brother.” It runs its hand through his hair in a possessive motion and he lets his eyes slide shut. He doesn’t know if he believes it, but that touch is comforting, and the drugs are making it really easy not to worry.

“What’s happening to me?” he asks.

“You remember what I told you before? On the phone?”

“Yes …”

“You and I, we’re sort of, well ...” The thing—Sam—his brother—pauses, frowning as though trying to get the words just right. “I guess you could say that death is our business. We’re knives for hire.”

“Don’t you mean ‘guns’?” Dean asks, but he already knows that Sam means what he said. He’s remembering the knife on the table.

“Whatever,” Sam says dismissively, and then continues, “The point is, when something needs doing, we do it. And because of my … special talents … and your training, we tend to have an unusual client base.”

“Like?”

“Demons mostly. A few witches here and there—the dark kind, of course—last month we did some work for a hoodoo priest down in Alabama.”

Dean wants to protest that none of those things exist, but he just saw Sam’s eyes go from black to brown, and he’s pretty sure that Sam didn’t actually have to touch the men in the police car to kill them. So instead he asks, “So why can’t I remember any of this?”

“Your last mark was a practitioner. You got him, but he got you back. Wiped your memory clean. I felt it happen. Don’t worry, it’s not permanent.”

Dean stares up at Sam’s face. At his brother’s face. “I don’t feel like a murderer,” he says.

“Don’t worry, Dean,” Sam soothes, his hand still stroking through Dean’s hair. “You will.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam keeps telling him that his memory will come back soon, but it keeps not happening.

That first week, Dean tries to sneak off a few times, not sure where he’s planning on going, but Sam always finds him and brings him back. Then it's time for more ‘medication’, and finally, when Sam gets fed up with fetching him, a lesson in pain that leaves Dean whimpering on the bathroom floor and wishing that he’d been born an only child. Sam doesn’t even have to touch him.

Sam lets Dean beg off jobs for a while, but after about a month he loses his patience and drags a woman back to the motel room where they’re staying. He drops her at Dean’s feet and shoves a knife into his hand and says, “If you don’t get your head back into the game _now_ , I’ll carve you up first and then do her anyway.”

Dean cuts her throat.

It’s messy and feels so goddamned _wrong_ and uncomfortable, like he’s never done this before. He doesn’t even make it to the bathroom before throwing up, but Sam’s hands are on his shoulders, rubbing gentle circles.

“You did good, Dean,” he purrs. “See? It’s just like riding a bike.”

Dean shivers underneath his brother’s hands and wishes that he didn’t feel a warm little surge of happiness in his stomach at Sam’s obvious approval, but it’s been so goddamned long _(never, as far as he can remember)_ since anyone has offered him anything even approaching praise, and he can’t help himself.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean pukes after the next kill, and the one after that, and the three following, and then he manages to fight down the urge. Sam slaps him on the back and takes him out to a bar for the first time and spends all night telling Dean how proud he is. He and Sam pick up a couple of girls and take them back to the motel and have a little fun with them.

Dean throws up afterwards, when he’s washing the blood off his hands, but he’s quiet about it. He doesn’t want Sam to know.

When he comes out of the bathroom, though, the look Sam gives him tells him that he heard, and is bitterly disappointed. Dean feels like shit. He wonders if Sam’s going to give up on him as a lost cause, and so he’s almost happy when Sam brings a kid back to the motel room with him the next night.

The kid, who must be all of eighteen, is pale and skinny. Tall, with a smattering of freckles across one cheek that Dean can just make out above the line of the gag Sam’s tied around his mouth. It gives him a strangely unbalanced look.

Sam tosses the kid onto the floor and shoots a sharp look at Dean, who is hanging back with a sinking feeling in his stomach. His happiness is quickly being overcome by a low thrum of fear. He’s caught a whiff of something he’s not sure he likes: something in the way that Sam is looking at him with a mixture of exasperation and annoyance and dark glee.

“Since you seem to be having some trouble remembering who you are,” Sam says by way of explanation, “I thought I’d give you a hand.”

He grabs the kid by the hair and pulls him up onto his knees. Tilts his head back so that his throat is exposed. The kid’s eyes are wide, pleading with Dean, but Dean can’t help him. He's in Sam’s hands now, which means that, if he’s lucky, he’s got about one minute to live.

The kid’s lucky.

Sam slits his throat in one smooth motion and then steps back and watches him bleed out on the floor. When the kid finally stops twitching, Sam dips one finger into the pool of the kid’s blood and then holds it up for Dean.

“Blood,” Sam says, like it means something.

Dean’s not sure what’s going on, but the killing is over and he wants so badly to be good—to make Sam proud—that he inches closer and nods anyway.

Sam uses his knife to cut off one of the kid’s fingers and then peels the skin away from the severed digit until he’s holding something knobby and smooth. He tosses the bloody object to Dean, who catches it out of reflex and then cradles it in one hand.

“Bone,” Sam says.

“I don’t understand.” Dean feels beyond stupid to admit that, but Sam would know if he tried to lie. Sam always knows.

Sam rolls his eyes in a ‘why me?’ expression, and then explains, “Blood and bones, Dean. That’s all they are.”

Dean eyes the bone in his hand skeptically. He still doesn’t understand. That was a _person_ Sam just killed. They’re _all_ people. That kid with the freckles on only one cheek had a name, and parents, and maybe a girlfriend waiting for a call that’s never going to come.

Sam seems to sense the sentimental direction of Dean’s thoughts because he strides over and grabs Dean by one arm and pulls him over to the kid’s body. Dean feels a knife handle thrust into his hand.

“We’re gonna take that—” Sam kicks the body “—apart until you get the fucking message.” He's snarling, all patience gone. “And if you’re still having trouble, I’ll bring back another one and we can start from the top.”

Dean ducks his head contritely and crouches in the pool of the kid’s blood to start sawing, more desperate than ever to get this right.

It’s difficult work to dismember a body as completely as Sam wants this one done. By the time they’re finished, Dean’s muscles are trembling and he’s covered in sweat. The litany of ‘blood and bone’, which Sam kept repeating while they worked, feels like it’s seared onto his eardrums.

Dean stands up and stumbles a few steps back to survey the red mess. It doesn’t look like much of anything anymore.

“See?” Sam pants triumphantly. “I told you. Blood and bones.”

“And skin,” Dean adds before he can help himself. He’s caught sight of a strip of said body part that is currently stuck to the bottom of his brother’s shoe and trailing along behind him like a stray piece of toilet paper. Sam follows his gaze and locates the tagalong. He pulls it off with a wet, squelching sound and tosses it on the pile.

“And skin,” he agrees, with an undercurrent of annoyance that borders on displeasure. “But my way’s more poetic, don’t you think?”

Dean’s been back with his brother long enough to understand that he isn’t here to think: he’s here to follow orders, and to learn how to be Sam’s partner again. Being Sam’s partner only requires that his hand not tremble on the knife handle, and he can’t even manage that much.

Dean doesn’t know how to answer Sam’s question, so instead he studies the mess they just made, struggling to figure out what his brother is trying to teach him. For a moment, he thinks of the way the kid’s eyes were filled with pleas— _‘help me, man; this guy’s nuts!’_ —and he wants to be sick just like he always does after a job.

He swallows before he can actually throw up—throwing up right now would be very dangerous to his health, he suspects—and then makes a concerted effort to look at what’s left of the kid the way that Sam wants him to. Pretends that blood and bones lie there and nothing else. No mind. No soul.

And just like that, it clicks: what Sam’s been doing his best to show Dean all along.

These pieces of flesh put on a real good show, but in the end, that’s all it is. All the crying, and the begging, and the hysterical, nervous laughter: it’s all an illusion. None of it is real. _They’re_ not real.

Sam’s real, though, and since he’s Dean’s brother, Dean supposes that he must be real too. It’s the two of them against the false, lying world.

“Blood and bones,” he mumbles.

Sam tosses a dripping arm around his shoulder and pulls him in for a quick hug. “Now you’re getting it!” he crows.

Dean smiles at his brother tentatively. For the first time, he feels, he’s catching a glimpse of the man he once was. It feels like coming home.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“That’s the fed,” Dean grunts, and Sam glances up from the steering wheel of the stolen car they’re currently using. It’s been almost five months since Sam taught him the lesson of Blood and Bone, and although Dean’s memory still hasn’t returned, he feels like his old self again.

“Henricksen,” Sam says, and then offers Dean a wicked grin. “You wanna?”

Dean’s heart speeds. He remembers the fed— _Henricksen_ , apparently—smashing his head into the wall when he was weak and didn’t know any better. When he didn’t know who he was.

“You really have to ask, Sammy?” he shoots back, and Sam edges the car after the fed, who is strolling along the sidewalk as though he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“How do you want to play this?” Sam asks.

“Let’s take him back to the room. Take our time.”

“Sounds fun.”

They’ve worked the snatch and grab often enough that Dean doesn’t really need to think about it anymore. Sam pulls up alongside the mark, and Dean gets out of the car and does the muscle work while Sam uses his ‘abilities’ to make certain that nobody pays attention. It works just as well on Henricksen as it has on all the others, and in half an hour they’re back at the room.

Henricksen is tied to the bed with a makeshift gag in his mouth, and Dean is kneeling over him, waiting for the fed to come around. When Henricksen does eventually open his eyes, Dean grins at him and says, “Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.” Just to show Henricksen that his memory has remained up and running since that near disastrous crash.

The fed is breathing like he’s just run a marathon, and Henricksen’s eyes actually bulge when Dean runs a knife across his chest, leaving a thin line of red _(blood and bone)_ in its wake. Sam leans over Dean’s shoulder, and Henricksen’s eyes dart over to him. For some reason, the man looks confused.

“Howdy, Henricksen,” Sam says, waggling his fingers at the trussed fed.

“What’s wrong?” Dean adds, digging the knife in a little deeper. “You’ve been looking everywhere for Sammy and me, and now here we all are together. I thought you’d be happy.”

The man only looks more confused through the pain, his eyes darting between Sam and Dean, and now he starts shaking his head. Sam presses a soft kiss to Dean’s temple before stepping back.

“Nice and slow, brother,” he murmurs, dropping onto the other bed to watch. “Let’s see if you can top your record on this one.”

“Blood and bones, Agent,” Dean agrees happily, and dives on in.

He’s just getting to the good part when the door to their room bursts open. He starts to turn his head to see what the fuck is going on and then he’s flying through the air and slamming into the wall. He loses his grip on the knife and lies there, pinned by some invisible force as two men storm into the room.

Henricksen is still screaming into his gag, and one of the men—the older, paunchy one—goes a little grey around the gills when he looks at the mess Dean’s made of the fed. Dean is waiting for Sam to do something about this, but his brother is just lounging on the bed. A sly smile plays about his face as he looks up at the younger, taller intruder.

“I see you've finally gotten a handle on those powers of yours," Sam says, tilting his head up. "Is that what took you so long to track us down? Cause I've gotta tell you, Sam: I thought you'd be a little quicker on the uptake."

The tall guy is glaring at Sam over the barrel of some kind of antique gun, and is it really possible that they have the same name? Dean guesses it is: it’s not like ‘Sam’ is an unusual name, after all. He struggles to move forward—to help his brother—and the tall intruder glances at him sharply.

“Stay there, Dean,” he snarls, and the force holding Dean against the wall increases, forcing a grunt out of him.

The pudgy guy, who is frantically trying to stop Henricksen from bleeding out, blurts in a sickened voice, “Jesus, Sam, he—”

“Not now, Bobby,” the tall intruder snaps. He’s staring at Dean’s brother again, and there’s so much hatred and anguish on his face that Dean shivers a little. “You _bitch_ ,” the intruder spits, and if words could kill then Sam would be a rotting corpse right about now.

“Is that any way to talk to an old friend?” Sam asks, crossing his legs. It’s a weird movement, almost feminine, but Dean’s too concerned for his brother’s safety to worry about it.

“How do we break it?” the tall intruder demands, cocking back the hammer on the old-fashioned gun he’s holding.

“No more bullets for that thing,” Sam trills. “I know for a fact that Dean-o here used the last one up.”

“We made some more,” the tall intruder says, and for some reason that makes Sam go pale and sit up straighter. Dean can’t figure why. This intruder isn’t real, not like they are. He’s only _blood-and-bone_ , and they can take him apart just as easily as they did all the others. Dean would do it in an instant if he could only move.

“You’re bluffing,” Sam says.

The intruder just smiles coldly. “Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it, isn't it?”

Sam's eyes narrow. When he speaks, his voice is dangerously soft. “You don’t really want to do anything here, Sam. I mean, you wouldn't want Dean to worry his pretty little head over anything he might have done over the past sixth months, would you? Because believe me, he’s done a _lot_.”

“We’ll get through it,” the tall intruder says tersely. “Now tell me how to break the damned spell, Meg.”

Sam smiles, wide and spiteful. “It’s more amusing this way anyway,” he says, and finally looks over at Dean.

There’s a blinding flash of pain and suddenly Dean knows, oh Jesus fuck, he _knows_ , and his head drops forward as he pukes, trying to expel almost five full months of murder and torture—and he’d _liked_ it, oh fuck, he’d _gotten off_ on it _(blood and bones, blood and bones and skin, oh my!)_ —and he’s sobbing and shaking against Sam’s—the _real_ Sam’s, _his_ Sam’s—power, which is holding him against the wall.

And when the fuck did that happen? Since when is Sam tossing shit around with his mind? Probably, Dean thinks in an absurd moment of clarity, about as long as _he’s_ been slicing up people for kicks. He can hear Bobby swearing over Henricksen—can hear the fed sobbing and screaming as Bobby tries to hold him together. Christ, how is the man even still _alive_ with half his insides lying next to him on the bed in orderly rows?

There’s the sound of a shot and Dean knows that the false brother—the _demon_ —is dead, but he’s too busy being sick to look up and see. The power restraining him vanishes and Dean falls forward—falls next to the knife _(blood)_ he dropped. He sees it even through his tears and reaches _(bones)_ for it, needs to end this, can’t handle it, but an oversized foot gets there first and kicks it away.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Sam says—Sammy, his Sam—and then there are arms _(blood and bones, bones and blood)_ around him, pulling him against a broad, familiar chest.

Dean pushes at his brother weakly, trying to get away. “Don’t touch me—Jesus—don’t—fuck—I can’t—Sammy, I—fuck—”

“Shh,” Sam whispers, holding him tighter. “I’m here, Dean. I’ve got you.”

But all Dean can see is that room where he first woke up. He sees himself barging in after that bitch Meg with a bottle of holy water in his hand and an exorcism on his lips, pissed as hell about her putting Sam in the hospital the night before. Sees himself being trussed up with weaves of demonic power. Being held still while Meg butchers the man who lives there.

She drenches Dean in the guy’s blood while she tells him exactly how she’s going to pay him back for daring to fuck with her not only once or twice, but four times. She’s going to teach him what Hell is really like, she hisses while the blood falls over him in a warm rain, and there isn’t a damned thing that he can do about it.

Now Dean’s covered in blood again, and Sam is holding him. Sam is telling him that everything’s going to be all right: that they’ll get through it. Somewhere in the distance, Bobby’s calling 911 and telling whoever picked up on the other end to get the fuck down here _now_ or they’re gonna have a dead fed on their hands.

Dean sobs and shudders and dry heaves against his brother until the echo of Meg’s cold laughter chases him down into the screaming darkness of his own mind. Into the place of blood and bones.

Into Hell.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Prompt (evil!Dean ficathon):** Dean the Homicidal Maniac: Dean somehow (however you want - get creative) gets a jumbled memory, and all he still knows is that he's Dean Winchester. He sees his FBI file (or his warrant or something, and what he's wanted for: homicide, assault, etc), and decides that since that's who he was, that's who he should continue to be. Bonus if he starts liking the serial killer routine.


End file.
